


sink in

by superglasspiano



Series: something about love, regret, and maybe forgiveness [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Based on a song, and some sadness on the side, hey look more angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 03:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16864984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superglasspiano/pseuds/superglasspiano
Summary: It’s the middle of the night and Adam can’t sleep. That doesn’t mean he wants to think about why.





	sink in

If there is one thing Adam wishes he could do, it’s forget. He remembers the feeling of another body beside him—it’s like you’re still there, even now.  _ Stop it,  _ he tells himself.  _ He’s not coming back. _

That’s the worst of it, really: the knowledge that you’re not coming home. Why keep holding on when it won’t do any good? All the wanting in the world can’t bring you back now.

Context: you went to space and died. The end. Kaput. That’s all there is to it. He needs to stop thinking of you so much. For sanity’s sake, if nothing else. 

But. Everywhere he goes, there’s some reminder. You lived here too, and the universe doesn’t seem to want him to forget that. You’re around every corner, waiting to spring out at him, lying in wait to replace his every other thought. Every moment he spent with you is around here somewhere. He just wants to let go.

It’s 2am and he can’t sleep. He keeps feeling a phantom weight in the bed beside him, and reaching out sleepily only to be reminded that he’s alone. Enough is enough. He crawls out of bed, throws on yesterday’s clothes, and goes downstairs. 

The cool night air wakes him up, clears his head. He glances up at the sky as he walks, but only briefly; it’s cloudy tonight, and he can’t see the stars. It’s silent at this time—the only sound is his footsteps on the pavement. There isn’t a breath of wind.

He stands there for a minute, just breathing. He doesn’t think of all the nights you spent in the dark with him, sneaking onto rooftops, sitting on top of any monkey bars you could find (you always said getting older would never stop you, not when there weren’t any kids around—kids always get first dibs on the playground. Then you died before 25, before age got the chance to try). You always wanted to be higher up, as close to the stars as possible, even on earth. He wonders what you were like outside the atmosphere; that was one thing he never got to see. 

So much for not thinking about it. He can’t think of anything but.

When he reaches the park (he didn’t go there consciously), he climbs as high as he can—which is admittedly still pretty low to the ground—and just sits there, soaking in the night. 

He wouldn’t be up here if not for you. He loves flying, but….your passion was unsurpassed. Your breathless joy at being “made of star stuff”, your midnight, 1am, 2am, 3am musings on what might be out there when you and he were both supposed to be sleeping. 

“We’ve gotta get up in the morning,” he would tell you.

You would smile. “I know.”

There was always an unspoken  _ but.  _ One he usually gave voice to, no matter how late it was. “But….?”

And you would take off on some rant about life or time or stars or dimensions or  _ anything _ , and he would listen. He usually saved his own rants for the daylight. 

Now, he remembers one line in particular, from a night you were thinking about….he’s still not entirely sure. Death, maybe? Of a sort? Something to do with everything being made of the same stuff in the end. “We came from stars. Someday, we’ll go back.”

It’s weighing him down; he feels like collapsing under the  _ you’re not here _ , and the  _ you’re never coming back. _ Everything you were, overshadowed by everything you’ll never get the chance to be. 

“Guess you get to be stars now, Takashi,” he whispers, and he wonders if he himself will ever be one. Someday. Not so soon.

He looks at the sky like it has the answers—it doesn’t matter what answers at this point, just some answers, any answers, something to tell him what to do now. How to bring someone home from way out there, maybe. Or how to forget. 

Either way, you’re gone. 

He leans back on the monkey bars and looks up at the stars, wishing you could be looking back. Wishing you were here. 

He wants to forget, but he can’t—and more than forgetting, he wants to go back, to when you were here. Whatever happens, he’ll always remember you, how it felt to be with you, to have you here. To have you here, alive, living, not gone, not dead. He sighs and swings onto the ground. The gravel of the playground crunches under his feet. 

_ This was going to happen someday, _ he reminds himself. You knew it, he knew, it everyone knew it (or most people did, at least): there was always going to be a time you didn’t come back—or when you couldn’t be allowed to go to start with. Not that it ever stopped you. 

He runs his hands through his hair, somewhere between absent and agitated. If only he could stop thinking….but he’s not sure that’s really what he wants to do, or if it’s something else, something he can’t (or won’t) admit to himself. Something about he’d rather you’re gone now but had the chance to live rather than never living at all—and if part of that included living with him, all the better. 

Tonight, it’s starting to sink in: you’re gone.

And you’re not coming back. 

He goes home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Look, it’s that weird pov again. I wonder what people think of it...... ;)


End file.
